A World Without Communication

I’m sure we’ve all thought about it from time to time. What would happen if the world lost its way to communicate both written and verbally? Being just left to deal with our nonverbal communication. Could the world even survive?

Nonverbal communication has been around far longer than both written and verbal communication, it shouldn’t be hard to to imagine what it would be like than, without any other form of verbal communication. Yet, when asking that question or even thinking it myself, the answer is extremely difficult to find. What would life be like?

Maybe it would be easier to think of what life wouldn’t be like.

1. There wouldn’t be as many liars.

Speaking, and especially writing are easy ways to lie. All one has to do is change a few words here and there, make sure the lie makes sense and continues to make sense the more that it is being said.

Unfortunately for even current liars, it’s the body language that gives away the lie. Even the most skilled liars will have occasional cues from their body language. Body language, or nonverbal communication, speaks the way you want to talk.

2. No more stories

This one is extremely difficult for me, and it seems the most obvious. Stories are created from words or pictures. Could there ever be a story solely based on nonverbal communication?

Where your body portrays a giant wild animal in some story. The big question is if anyone would even understand that your body is meant to be a giant wild animal. Sure, it could, but in the rules we have established for this new world could that sort of communication work out? Possibly.

3. Even our thoughts would be affected

How would we think? Thought would change from a very wordy process in the brain to a string of need and want. The words would vanish and what would be left would amount to pictures or actions.

Even the worst of imaginations would skyrocket into something unimaginable–magical. The world would be ours to create because we would have no way to understanding each other, and possibly the world.

But there would be no way to communicate this to others. Would the mind explode from all its bottled up wonders? Or would we all be as children and run and play in fields or hills. The line between what is childlike and adult-like would be severed. All of what could be considered mature, disappears. Even without verbal or written communication the world would thrive on language, body language.

4. The World would fall into mass chaos.

Think about it. One day you’re at the supermarket, getting some milk when suddenly communication was lost. As I explained earlier, thought would change. Would even the basic idea of paying for that milk make sense? Or would the very fact of needing the milk make you walk out the store without paying it?

With this in mind, work would dissolve into nothing. School would be nothing. The world would be forced to go back to a more basic, primitive past. Sure, maybe certain features of learning or understanding would still survive, but what exactly?

The world, a beautiful, wonderful thing would become in some ways very pure, and other ways very sad.